U.S. Embassy Sponsors Discussion on Housing Study

April 26, 2007
No. 24/07

The U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Section, in cooperation with the Addis Ababa University Faculty of Technology on April 26, 2007 held a half-day workshop at the Ghion Hotel on “Supplying Central City Housing for all Income Groups in Addis Ababa,” a research project in urban planning conducted by Dr. Rosemary Curran, a U.S. Fulbright Scholar affiliated with the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at Addis Ababa University (AAU).  Dr. Wubshet Berhanu, General Manager of the Addis Ababa City Administration, delivered opening remarks. 

The workshop was an opportunity for Dr. Curran to present and discuss the initial findings of two years of research to develop strategies for Addis Ababa’s urban development that allow for a renewed, vital urban core that includes adequate housing for all income groups. 

Participants at the workshop included academics, city administrators and planners, government officials, and representatives of civil society and the private sector.  The study and subsequent discussion looked at the central areas of Addis Ababa that are destined for redevelopment, and at ways by which this redevelopment can provide new mixed-use, mixed income neighborhoods without the major resettlement of poor households to the city periphery.  The study concluded that a renewed, vital urban core that includes housing for all income groups is not just desirable, but also financially feasible, and politically possible.

Dr. Curran received her Masters Degree in Urban Planning from the University of Washington in 1998 and her Ph.D. from Fordham University in 1982.  Prior to coming to Ethiopia, she worked for eight years as a Planning Research Analyst in the King County Executive Department, Seattle, Washington.  Dr. Curran has been in Addis Ababa since 2006, teaching and conducting research under the U.S. Fulbright Program, sponsored by the United States Department of State, Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs.  The Fulbright program sends 800 U.S. faculty and professionals abroad each year to lecture and conduct research in a wide variety of academic and professional fields. ♦

For more information, contact:
Tina Malone, Information Officer
US Embassy, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Tel: 011 517 4244
e-mail:  MaloneBA@state.gov